Somali women talk as their camels wait for their turn to drink water from a tank near Harfo, 70 km from Galkayo
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Everything Changed When The Fire Nation Attacked | Kimani Okearah
Media is a language we’ve developed to communicate on a wide scale. From hieroglyphics to books to television to this sentence you’re reading right now, it’s all a process based on combining our linguistic resources -patterns of movement, symbols, and sounds- to connect to each other. Sometimes this communication is direct, like a live viewing or a VoIP (voice-over internet protocol - think Facetime) conversation. Sometimes it’s passive, like reading an ancient text, swimming in the knowledge of our ancestors. We’re going to use this understanding of media as a language to explore how its misuse can maintain ideological divisions. We’re gonna get down with messaging techniques using the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It gave me life. Maybe I can give it back.
Racism exists as an ideological system of power in Western society. We classify individuals and their communities based on impressions of a global minority - in our reality, it’s various groups of Europeans insisting on an imperial legacy based on their claim to the fabricated concept of “whiteness.” If this system is negative, then it must have a counter, a positive system in which these individuals are exempt from these racial classifications. Unfortunately, no such system exists. If you don’t fit the social perception ascribed to your visual appearance, you’re considered an anomaly. Many of us have lived this, and it doesn’t feel good. This ‘racism, or lack thereof’ approach that we in creative media embrace is a result of exceptionalism (also called Chauvinism for hilarious French reasons). Exceptionalism is the social agreement that the ideology of the dominant group is exceptional, and therefore anything that does not coincide with this ideology is an unwelcome departure. The first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender uses exceptionalism in a reverse binary as a code to both enable and challenge the dominant social ideology. Flameo, hotman!
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Mwasi Collective: Afrofeminist Resistance in France | Clementine Burnley
The confident prints and colours at the Afropunk Festival this weekend in Paris lifted my heart. For my generation, to wear anything “African” was to risk being identified with Africa and treated accordingly. Many of us shied away from that experience. The young people at Afropunk seem different from their parents and grandparents. Their homes are in Africa as well as in Europe, North America, Australia. Their concerns and understanding of their Blackness is probably different from mine. But we share a common experience of discrimination. There are people who assume that as time goes by and hipsters grow facial hair, discrimination fades away. Instead, the attitudes of the past find new expression with each generation and so Black consciousness is remade in each new generation. I caught up with the Mwasi Collective, a black feminist organization active in France.
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There is No One Way to Be | Benjamina Dadzie
We are made to feel as though we can be only one thing, that we can inhabit one space and find fulfillment through one dimension of ourself. Therefore, if you define yourself as feminist, you’re often seen as someone who knows no intellectual fluidity beyond an elementary understanding of what being a feminist entails.Connect with us: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Google + | Youtube
AfroFutures - Art, and Staying Alive under Global Capitalism | Clementine Burnley
If we think of art as a game, maybe even “the beautiful game” then let’s take a look at who is on the playing field? These people range between independently wealthy and homeless. People who do not need to make a living at all or who cannot live without art.
How long players are able to experiment, train, sharpen their vision, live long enough to mature, depends very much on the conditions of their existence.
What are the material conditions under which Afropeople make ART a fulltime or part-time thing they do?
There are also powerful inner voices that speak to afroartists at 3 am, insomniac and worried, of self-doubt and fear. Of criticism, failure, of being judged and found not to be sufficient. Not inspired, trained enough, not being understood, being compared to a norm which isn’t calibrated by Africans.
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Art in Conversation | Benjamina Dadzie
Art is an essential part of life, whether we live it, consume it, or produce it. In the last decade or so, we have experienced the emergence of African and Afrodiasporic artists in different fields – music, visual arts, digital art, creative writing, performing arts, etc. And for most of us, the work of the artist is our gateway into their many different experiences, experiences we otherwise may have never been introduced to.
But what does it mean to be a creative or an artist?During the months of April, May, and June, we will explore what moves artists to create and express themselves in the ways that they do. We’ll use these conversations as an opportunity to grasp the challenges and/or benefits of being a creative in an age of digital media, and money driven businesses.
Religion or No Religion… That is the Question | Khaoula El Otmani
In all the many aspects of my life I noticed a deep difference between the values and culture I find at home and the ones I find in school or work.
I was raised in a religious environment and most people I’ve known during my childhood have the same ideas and beliefs as my parents’, give or take. As I grew up, though, I started to realize that religion wasn’t a priority for many people and that most of them confuse religion with culture and think that they’re interchangeable.
Nowadays, most people I know are not religious. But, I noticed that they still swear by the Islamic beliefs and feel that it is necessary to follow certain aspects of the religion. Except when it contradicts their lifestyle.
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